Hike to Eva Lake in the Revelstoke National Park

Posted on June 21, 2015 by Phil

Recommended by a Revelstoke local, Steven from Revy Outdoors, we decided to try a 12-km hike to Eva Lake, equipped with a brand-new bear spray…

Successfully managing 16 switch-backs of the 26km “The Meadows in the Sky Parkway” with our oversized camping-car, we arrived at the subalpine summit of Mt Revelstoke, without any sweat.

At the parking lot a friendly Parks Canada staff, Tomo, asked us, “are you guys walking or want a ride up?” Without any hesitation we hopped on, while Tomo is coaching us briefly how to avoid bears, saying: “The bears smell you so you have to smell them in advance…”

I said to him, “I don’t know how a bear smells”, because unfortunately (or fortunately!) I have never encountered them close enough…

This free shuttle bus brought us further up to our trail starting point.

After chatting for a while with Tomo Fujimura, a Japanese from Parks Canada who drove us, we commenced our hike, already gaining quite an altitude. The trail was still patched with snow at the end of June and other young hikers with shorts and sneakers were struggling with snow slopes.

In the middle of our trail, we met Steven, his wife, and son, who already had sushi lunch at the Eva Lake and were on the way of coming down. His son is a big sushi lover and it is funny to imagine a Canadian family eating sushi, of course, a packed one, at the top of a Canadian national park peak.

A little uphill we arrived mysterious Eva Lake (1920 m). The clear water was surrounded by snow, trees, and mountains – a super picturesque scenery. Happily, we ate our well-earned sandwich lunch there, gazing at the tranquil surface of the water and walking around the lake shore. We loved it and stayed there such a long time that we missed our last shuttle bus at 5:30 pm…

We are impressed that in Canada they have designated parking lots for those oversized camping cars absolutely everywhere. It seems that a camping car is Canadians’ preferred mode of travel and the parks are organized to accommodate them.